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      ‘Eric LaRue’ Review: When Pain Won’t Stay Quiet

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      Judy Greer stars in a searing drama about the mother of a school shooter and all the things we try not to say.Most of us would say we’re “at a loss for words” when senseless tragedy strikes. We try to use words anyhow — to comfort, to explain, to process, to apologize. It’s a human impulse. But it’s insufficient, and can harm as much as it helps.That insufficiency of language is the stealth subject of “Eric LaRue,” the feature directorial debut of Michael Shannon. Stealth, because its premise is a bit of a misdirect. Like last year’s “Ghostlight,” it’s a gut-punching indie drama borne out of the Chicago theater scene. The playwright Brett Neveu adapted it from his play by the same name, produced in 2002 at A Red Orchid Theater, of which Shannon is a founding member. Writers who come from theater tend to evince a keen understanding of how, in talking to one another, we reveal and conceal what’s inside of us — and that’s at the core of Neveu’s script.But that premise, it’s a tough one to sit down and watch: Janice LaRue (a remarkable Judy Greer, in a lead role at last) is the mother of a school shooter. Her teenage son, Eric, is in prison, and she is trying to put her life back together, or at least figure out if that’s something she wants to do.Her husband Ron (Alexander Skarsgard, sporting an admirably off-putting arrangement of facial hair) is not helping: he’s eager to move on from the incident, and is making headway, thanks to his overly friendly colleague Lisa (Alison Pill). She’s convinced him to join to her church, an evangelical congregation pastored by the imperious Bill Verne (Tracy Letts), who instructs Ron to act like the head of his household and tell Janice how things will go in their home.Janice is not interested, either in being told what to do or in Ron’s new church family, and not really interested in Ron at this point, either. She’s still attending their less trendy Presbyterian church, pastored by the well-meaning but blundering Steve Calhan (Paul Sparks), who tries to counsel her in his office but doesn’t have many helpful things to say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Movie That Can Help You Understand Cory Booker’s 25-Hour Senate Speech

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      “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” starring Jimmy Stewart as a naïve senator, explores the idealism — and reality — behind the tactic.Late in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Frank Capra’s 1939 ode to democracy, free speech and the filibuster, a CBS newsman is trilling into his microphone near the Senate chamber. Inside that august room, he tells his listeners, is a man engaging in “the American privilege of free speech in its most dramatic form.”“The rrrrright,” he calls it, rolling that r, “to talk your head off!”He is referring to Jefferson Smith (played by a 30-ish Jimmy Stewart, all big eyes and gee-willikers wonder), the fish-out-of-water junior senator from some unnamed Western state and political party, who’s held the Senate floor all night and is still at it. He’s filibustering an appropriations bill to protest graft and injustice, specifically injustice against himself and more generally against the people of his state, his country and heck, why not, the whole world.I thought of Smith and his idealism while watching Senator Cory Booker on Tuesday, 24 hours into his own record-setting speech to protest the actions of the Trump administration. (Technically it wasn’t a filibuster because it did not come during a debate over a specific bill or nominee.) Stewart’s performance is calibrated to heightened Hollywood standards, to be sure, but by the end of the movie’s daylong filibuster, Smith looks as if he’s got the flu: sweaty, haggard, staggering around, voice reduced to a painful rasp. By contrast Booker, who’s about 25 years older than that character, remained coherent and composed and also audible, even when he concluded at the 25-hour mark.Cory Booker emerging from the Senate after his record-setting speech.Eric Lee/The New York TimesIn truth, I always think of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (for rent on Apple TV+) when this kind of speech comes up. I saw it dozens of times as a teenager, as it was a favorite in the home-school community to which my family belonged. It’s both very funny and profoundly idealistic, with its underlying belief that anybody who tries a feat this athletic and grueling — as the CBS newsman reminds the crowd, sitting down ends the filibuster — must be in the right. “Either I’m dead right or I’m crazy!” Smith hollers at one point.“You wouldn’t care to put that to a vote, would you, senator?” one of his irritated colleagues replies. We know the movie’s answer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Review: Block by Bizarre Block

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      Jack Black and Jason Momoa star in this adaptation of the megahit video game that leans into the mindless silliness of mid-aughts comedy.Occasionally, amid the cycles of nostalgic clip-sharing that periodically occur online, you might happen upon the Berries and Cream video. The viral Starburst commercial, involving a briefcase-toting pilgrimesque lad, is a concise distillation of the particular brand of mid-to-late-aughts humor that dominated the early internet: quaintly absurd, silly, and above all, random. When, early on in “A Minecraft Movie,” a makeshift rocket pack is sent hurtling toward a nearby potato chip factory, obliterating its giant mascot chip and leaving executives inside wailing, that genre of ad improbably blazes in the mind.That this adaptation of the megahit video game, directed by Jared Hess, fully commits to capturing that era of stupidly “epic,” or epically stupid, laughs shouldn’t come as a surprise. Hess, after all, laid a lot of groundwork for early internet humor with his 2004 indie comedy “Napoleon Dynamite.” And the star here, Jack Black, was the lead in Hess’s 2006 follow-up, “Nacho Libre.”This retro sensibility might, on paper, make for an out-of-touch comedy, but there’s something almost refreshingly bold in the full-tilt inanity here — in taking a blockbuster budget and embracing idiocy, as if to knowingly say, “I mean, it’s a Minecraft movie.”That charitable read is most immediately guided by Black, whose comedic persona of earnest goofiness has survived our age of irony. He plays Steve, a disillusioned office worker who decides to chase his dream of working as a miner. When he axes into a mysterious magic cube, it opens a portal to the Overworld, the blocky world of Minecraft, with its limitless potential for creation.But when a crew of ragtag outsiders, led by a washed-up video game champion named Garrett (Jason Momoa), unwittingly get their hands on the cube and enter the Overworld, they become caught in a battle for the universe’s survival.Most of this plays out with a camp quality of so-dumb-it’s-sort-of-fun. The visuals often appear intentionally, even egregiously artificial, something that only partly works; Hess’s early success was rooted in a deliberately askew visual grammar that worked in an indie medium, but with a studio extravaganza, it often simply translates as — well, a Starburst commercial.But those who can buy into Hess’s sensibility will get a nostalgic kick: Momoa, who is at times genuinely funny and at other times just capably creating sketches, is essentially doing a rendition of Rex, a side character from “Napoleon Dynamite.” (Also, for fans of that movie, there is more than one bit about tater tots.)The silliness of “A Minecraft Movie” will appeal to kids who love the game, to adults who think fondly of this comedy era, and perhaps to few else. But the movie could have gone a more polished and predictable route, like another of Black’s game-related movies, “Jumanji.” In a world of such factory-line adaptations, there’s more of an identity here, even if it’s a mindless one.A Minecraft MovieRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Val Kilmer in ‘Batman Forever’ Was a True 1990s Moment

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      The actor took only one turn in the famous batsuit. That film, “Batman Forever,” couldn’t be a more representative artifact of its era.In June 1995 a pop confection hit thousands of movie screens. It seemed to embody what both boosters and critics have identified as that decade’s end-of-history nonchalance. It was, of all things, a Batman movie. And holding it together, the sturdy straight man surrounded by abject goofiness, was Val Kilmer, the actor who died at the age of 65 on Tuesday.“Batman Forever” was the third movie in a franchise kicked off in 1989 by the director Tim Burton’s brooding “Batman.” Starring Michael Keaton in the title role and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, “Batman” was, by the standards of the time, dark for a comic-book flick.Burton’s and Keaton’s follow-up, “Batman Returns” (1992), failed to repeat the original’s box-office success. So a new director, Joel Schumacher, was brought in expressly to make what one journalist termed a “Batman Lite.” Schumacher was a fan of Kilmer’s portrayal of Doc Holliday in the 1993 western “Tombstone” and tapped him as his leading man.This was not Burton’s Batman. “There’s not much to contemplate here,” the critic Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times, “beyond the spectacle of gimmicky props and the kitsch of good actors (all of whom have lately done better work elsewhere) dressed for a red-hot Halloween.”Schumacher favored showy camera angles and a garish color scheme. The villains — Jim Carrey played the Riddler, Tommy Lee Jones was Two-Face — were freely permitted to chew the scenery. Batman’s suit had nipples. The movie was weird.It was also a box-office smash. It broke an opening-weekend record and eventually brought in more than $336 million worldwide, besting its predecessor by tens of millions of dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Val Kilmer: A Life in Pictures

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      Val Kilmer, an actor known for his work in “Top Gun,” “The Doors” and “Batman Forever,” died on Tuesday at the age of 65. Here are some snapshots from his life and career.Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch, Via APCher and Kilmer in 1984, the same year he made his feature debut in the slapstick Cold War spy movie “Top Secret!”George Rose/Getty ImagesKilmer in 1988, the year he appeared in the children’s fantasy film “Willow.”Bonnie Schiffman/Getty ImagesKilmer in a series of black-and-white photos in 1986.Paramount PicturesKilmer starred opposite Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” in 1986.Michael Tighe/Donaldson Collection, via Getty ImagesKilmer, posing in 1994, starred as the profligate gunslinger Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” the year before.Warner Bros./Sunset Boulevard and Corbis, via Getty ImagesIn 1995, Kilmer took on “Batman Forever,” in which he battled Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey). Nicole Kidman played Dr. Chase Meridian.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc, via Getty ImagesKilmer, Carrey and Kidman at a Las Vegas convention in 1995.Carolco/Getty ImagesKilmer being apprehended by the police in a scene from the 1991 film “The Doors.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesKilmer posing for one of his earliest movies, “Real Genius” (1985).Fairchild Archive/Penske Media, via Getty ImagesSean Penn and Kilmer at a book party in Venice, Calif., in 1995.Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc, via Getty ImagesKilmer in 1997, the year he starred in “The Saint,” a thriller about a debonair, resourceful thief playing cat-and-mouse with the Russian mob.M. Caulfield/WireImage, via Getty ImagesKilmer worked with Robert Downey Jr. and Shane Black on “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” in 2005.Donato Sardella/WireImage, via Getty ImagesKilmer in 2006. He was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the acting program at Juilliard. More

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      Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65

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      A wide-ranging leading man who earned critical praise, he was known to be charismatic but unpredictable. At one point he dropped out of Hollywood for a decade.Val Kilmer, a homegrown Hollywood actor who tasted leading-man stardom as Jim Morrison and Batman, but whose protean gifts and elusive personality also made him a high-profile supporting player, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 65.The cause was pneumonia, said his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer. Mr. Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered, she said.Tall and handsome in a rock-star sort of way, Mr. Kilmer was in fact cast as a rocker a handful of times early in his career, when he seemed destined for blockbuster success. He made his feature debut in the slapstick Cold War spy-movie spoof “Top Secret!” (1984), in which he starred as a crowd-pleasing, hip-shaking American singer in Berlin unwittingly involved in an East German plot to reunify the country.He gave a vividly stylized performance as Jim Morrison, the emblem of psychedelic sensuality, in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991), and he played the cameo role of Mentor — an advice-giving Elvis as imagined by the film’s antiheroic protagonist, played by Christian Slater — in “True Romance” (1993), a violent drug-chase caper written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott.Val Kilmer as the rock singer Jim Morrison in the 1991 film “The Doors.”Sidney Baldwin/TriStar PicturesMr. Kilmer had top billing (ahead of Sam Shepard) in “Thunderheart” (1992), in which he played an unseasoned F.B.I. agent investigating a murder on a South Dakota Indian reservation, and in “The Saint” (1997), a thriller about a debonair, resourceful thief playing cat-and-mouse with the Russian mob. Most famously, perhaps, between Michael Keaton and George Clooney he inhabited the title role (and the batsuit) in “Batman Forever” (1995), doing battle in Gotham City with Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey), though neither Mr. Kilmer nor the film were viewed as stellar representatives of the Batman franchise.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At New Directors/New Films, the Faces Tell the Story

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      They’re the great cinematic landscape in stories as diverse as “Familiar Touch,” about dementia, and “Timestamp,” about Ukrainian schoolchildren.In “Familiar Touch,” Kathleen Chalfant plays a woman whose inner life alternately burns bright and suddenly dims. Her character, Ruth, has an inviting smile and natural physical grace, though at times she falters midstep. A former cook and a cookbook author now in her 80s, she lives alone in a pleasant modern home cluttered with shelves of books and just-so personal touches that convey the passage of time in a full, well-lived life. Ruth seems thoroughly at ease in her own skin when she first appears, bustling in her kitchen. She’s preparing lunch for a visitor who, you soon learn, is the son she no longer recognizes.Written and directed by Sarah Friedland, “Familiar Touch” is the opening-night selection Wednesday in the New Directors/New Films festival and a terrific leadoff for the annual event. Ruth’s openly loving and hurting son soon hurries her to his car — she thinks that they’re en route to a hotel — and into an assisted living facility. There, she settles into a new reality as she struggles with her memory, connects with other residents and finds support among the staff. In Chalfant’s mesmerizing, eloquently expressive face, you see both Ruth’s piercing loss and a soul safely settling into the eternal now as her past, present and future fade away.Kathleen Chalfant as a woman with dementia in “Familiar Touch.”Armchair Poetics LLCChalfant’s is just one of the memorable faces in the annual New Directors/New Films series, a collaboration of Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art that gathers movies from around the world. Established in 1972, the event was designed to draw attention to the kind of nonmainstream work that didn’t always make it into commercial theaters. That’s one reason that I always look forward to it; the other is that its programmers take film seriously. That’s clear throughout the lineup, which could use more genre variety, yet, at its finest, offers you personal, thoughtful, imaginative, adult work of the kind that plays in art houses and on more adventurous streamers. These are movies made and chosen by people who love the art.That love is also evident in the great diversity of men, women and children in the program, a variety that underscores the centrality of the human face as the great cinematic landscape. This year, partly because of the dystopian chatter about A.I., I was struck anew by the deep, signifying power of smiles, frowns and sneers, and how watching movies usually means watching other people. No matter if their directors tug at your heart (as in the documentary “Timestamp”) or keep you at an intellectual distance (the drama “Drowning Dry”), these movies present an astonishment of humanity. In selection after selection, old and young visages, some untroubled and others wrenched in pain, bring you face-to-face with the world.“Timestamp” follows Ukrainian classes near the front and in the center of the country.2Brave Productions/a_Bahn/Rinkel DocsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘The Friend,’ A Great Dane and His Co-Star, Naomi Watts, Learn New Tricks

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      Typically on movie sets, only big stars get those fancy, oversized trailers for dressing rooms. But on “The Friend” an unknown was a really big star. Even bigger than his fellow actor Naomi Watts.Quite literally: The newcomer, Bing, is the Harlequin Great Dane at the center of “The Friend,” the new film based on Sigrid Nunez’s National Book Award-winning novel. At around 150 pounds, he needed the substantial accommodations between scenes so he could rest and move his pony-like frame without overstimulation. His trailer request was approved.“The Friend” tells the story of a writer named Iris (Watts) who is grieving the death by suicide of her mentor, Walter (Bill Murray). The difficult process of mourning is compounded when she learns that Walter has asked that she look after his dog, the huge Apollo (Bing), who is mired in sorrow himself. Apollo initially is resistant to Iris’s affections, longing for his dead master and taking over her small New York City apartment. Eventually they heal together.When Watts got the script, she was skeptical that the movie would even work.Bing and his co-star, Naomi Watts, in a scene in “The Friend.”Bleecker Street Media“In the film industry we know the old adages: More time, more money if you add animals and children, and this was a small budget in New York City,” she said in a video interview. “What was being presented on the page, it just seemed like, ‘How will we be able to achieve this?’”But the film’s directors, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, were undeterred and set about finding the perfect pup for the part. For that, they went to the veteran animal trainer William Berloni, who also had his doubts. He thought it would be impossible to find a dog that fit the requirements of the role: A black-and-white spotted Dane with his testicles still intact who had a movie-star quality.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More